‘I’m guessing you walk out of the gym feeling kind of invigorated, yet your results are middle of the road,’ he writes.

‘I’m suggesting the results you really want lie somewhere in the ballpark of crawling or staggering out to your car with your arms shaking so badly you’re barely able to pull your car keys out of your pocket and hold the steering wheel steady on the drive home.’

Road safety hazards aside, his book, Evolution: The Cutting-Edge Guide To Breaking Down Mental Walls And Building The Body You’ve Always Wanted, contains information about how to do various exercises, tips on diet and workout programmes readers can try.

It’s also illustrated with dozens of pictures of the author shirtless and looking intense (of course).

But it’s not just his nipples he’s baring – it’s also his soul. Manganiello writes about the role weightlifting has played in his life and the importance exercise had in helping him turn his back on drink and
drug addiction.

Manganiello, 37, got his big break as Peter Parker’s love rival Flash Thompson in the 2002 Spider-Man film. He didn’t land another acting job for four years. ‘I was drinking a bottle of whisky and smoking two packs of cigarettes a day,’ he says.

He won’t elaborate on what other substances he was abusing. ‘I don’t want to go into all that but you don’t end up needing to get sober at the age of 25 if drugs aren’t involved.

Joe Manganiello formed a production company with his brother (Picture: supplied)

‘It got very bad. My entire life was practically ruined,’ he says. ‘With any addict there’s a metaphorical and sometimes a literal trail of bodies – luckily in my case there wasn’t a literal one but there was certainly a metaphorical one. I hurt myself and those around me repeatedly.

I knew I had a problem and didn’t know how to deal with it. It destroyed every relationship I had, my career was in ruins, I was a mess. Every aspect of my life was completely bankrupt.’

He credits getting sober to luck – ‘you have to get to that place where your eyes open up and it just sticks’ – and also to starting boxing training with a hockey player acquaintance. ‘Cleaning up my act led to a better diet, which led to pushing myself further and further physically,’ he says.

He took up a job on a building site – inspired by the lead character in The Fountainhead (a novel by right-wing author Ayn Rand), who works in a quarry. ‘I thought my dream of acting was over but, in the meantime, I was going to become the greatest shoveller, cement mixer and jackhammer operator of all time,’ he says.

The wilderness years drew to an end when Manganiello landed the role in saucy supernatural soap True Blood. He’s been getting work ever since – although so far the roles seem to highlight his hard-earned muscly torso rather than his acting ability – playing stripper Big Dick Richie in Magic Mike and womanising fitness fanatic Davis in What To Expect When You’re Expecting.

It’s a situation Manganiello hopes will change when True Blood finishes its run next year.

‘I’ve been acting for 20 years and people have only really started paying attention after True Blood happened – that’s four years,’ he says. ‘People have only seen 20 per cent of what I can do.

‘It’s interesting when you’ve done Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw and all the classics, and you get famous for taking your shirt off and growling in the woods.’

Manganiello is certainly committed to his craft. He auditioned twice to get into the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, taking a year of acting classes at the University of Pittsburgh and accepting every fringe acting job he could find to prepare for his second successful attempt to join the school.

For his early stage performances, he shaved himself bald for one role and pulled a tooth out with pliers for another.

And it’s not only acting work he’s keeping himself busy with. He’s formed a production company with his brother and directed a documentary, La Bare, about a male strip club in Texas, which is currently showing at film festivals.

‘Last year I was doing one scene per episode in True Blood,’ he says, ‘so I had time to write this book and make the movie. It worked out to my benefit.’

He’s also made a cameo appearance in Terrence Malick’s forthcoming film Knight Of Cups and stars in action film Sabotage.

Manganiello’s outlook on life is inspiring – but at the same time being Joe Manganiello sounds pretty exhausting. ‘I used to look at life as: “What can I get away with?” After I stopped drinking it became: “What can I accomplish?”

‘Now it’s become about how good my life can get and how much can I achieve because things were awful for a while,’ he says. ‘Addiction nearly killed me and successfully ruined my life. I came back from the brink.’

Joe Manganiello’s new fitness book (Picture: supplied)

Review: Evolution By Joe Manganiello (Simon and Schuster)This six-week transformation programme might be a bit excessive if the book is aimed at beginners. Training six times a week is not advisable for someone starting a strength programme.

Also, if the goal is increased muscle volume, the exercise rep ranges seem a bit high. In the nutrition section, there’s a big emphasis on protein – but while a moderate increase may be beneficial, there’s no evidence to support the necessity of very high protein intakes.

The book is good in that it mentions the importance of nutrition and motivation, and emphasises that change doesn’t happen overnight. But it could be set out more clearly and the workout programmes could have been structured better.

As with most – if not all – celebrity exercise books, it’s not really saying anything new.